User:Sharynlb123/sandbox

In 1969, trailblazer and Los Angeles local Warren W. Blaney founded a nonprofit organization, Senior Sports International and promoted it as the “Senior Olympics”. Today the Senior Olympics is known worldwide as the National Senior Games. At the time, the Senior Olympics was the first nationwide multisport competition that actively encouraged older athletes, 40 and older to participate in a variety of events. Warren’s philosophy was to “Stay Healthy and Happy” and his mission was to “Create the New Adult Image.”  With his own money, earned from a successful business career of selling various products, one being Sparkle*, he created the Senior Olympics for everyone as a gift to the world. Both the Helms Athletic Foundation and the Los Angeles Times were avid supporters and sponsored various events. Warren avoided the spotlight, preferring instead to focus attention on the vigor and abilities of the competitors in his events, sometimes joining in the 100-yard dash and swimming competitions. Once, on the Merv Griffin show, he arrived in shorts and a t-shirt, fresh off the track. With his friend, Jack LaLanne, they would spend hours in Venice Beach weightlifting as they felt you were never too old to work up a healthy sweat. Ahead of his time when it came to fitness and diet. He walked five to six miles daily and believed in a diet rich in fruits and vegetables. However, he was known at times to eat daily a gallon of ice cream and a box of graham crackers, claiming this was milk and fiber intake. Even into his 70s, Warren who stood 5, 11” feet, kept his weight at 156 pounds. As quoted in the L.A. Times in 1974, his fitness secret was simple and straightforward: “Your body tells you what it needs, [and] all you have to do is listen.”

As the Senior Olympics movement grew from Los Angeles to across the country, one of appeals to recreational exercisers was that they occasionally found themselves lined up alongside world-famous athletes. A few noteworthy celebrities were Buster Crabbe, Ronald Reagan, Charles Schultz, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley and California Senator Alan Cranston. In 1979 the age limit was lowered to 25, and the Senior Olympics had grown to over 5,000 competitors in sports ranging from tennis and bowling to ice skating to sailing to ice hockey. Participants ranged in age and were grouped in 5 year blocks. By 1979 there were 750 athletes over the age of 65. The Senior Olympics success was due to the promoting and recruiting more and more older athletes. With Warren and his son Worth at the helm, they lived and promoted their philosophy of “Creating the New Adult Image”. For example, by including ice hockey in the games, “Peanuts” cartoonist Charles Schulz, a hockey buff since childhood, not only participated in the Senior Olympics games for several years, Schultz offered to take over the hockey program and help cover the expenses, according to the 2000 book Charles M. Schulz: Conversations. As father and son worked together, they helped UCLA and USC scientists to recruit senior competitors for a 1982 study on the effect of aging on the body’s ability to take in and use oxygen. In 1985, at the age of 84, Warren and Worth Blaney turned administration of the games over to the National Senior Games. After his death in 2000, Warren was inducted into the National Senior Games Hall of Fame. Thanks to the vision and innovation of the Senior Olympics, today scores of older athletes from all over the world are following the path that Warren envisioned when he started in 1969 and are feeling healthier and happier. In 1983, a Los Angeles Times interview quoted Warren as saying, “This kind of thing is good in every way. Instead of looking back as people get older, Senior Olympians think about tomorrow” They think, I’ll beat that guy next year.”